


It's Wizardry, My Dear Watson!

by mutuisanimis



Category: Cats of Grand Central - Diane Duane, Elementary (TV), Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-16 17:15:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/864563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutuisanimis/pseuds/mutuisanimis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and Joan get a missing child case, and Sherlock seeks Tom's assistance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Wizardry, My Dear Watson!

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Baozhale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baozhale/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to tumblr cousins geekhyena, littleskywatcher, devieklutz, and especially verdigrisvagabond. This story would not exist without you guys. All remaining errors are mine.
> 
> To that end, I tried very hard to line up timelines from these three series, but some things undoubtedly slipped through the cracks. If anyone catches any continuity errors, PLEASE tell me. I will pull a DD and do an NME thing =P (This is supposed to be in March or April of 2013.)
> 
> An Ailuran-English glossary is given in the end notes.
> 
> Disclaimer: Anything you recognize belongs to Diane Duane or to the owners of _Elementary_. I merely play with their characters and worlds out of love and admiration.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, Baozhale!

“Watson.”

Joan groaned quietly and blinked. Sherlock stood beside her bed, fully dressed and rocking on the balls of his feet.

“What time is it?” She rolled over, briefly, then leaned forward to sit upright.

Clothes dropped into her lap. “Seven forty-eight,” Sherlock answered.

“I assume we have an appointment somewhere?”

“Yes. Missing child. No leads. Get dressed.” He turned on his heel and went downstairs. She put on her clothes and went after him.

She entered the kitchen and began to fill the kettle for tea. Sherlock handed her a travel mug and began briefing her on their case, pacing about the kitchen.

“So Aduna Grant is a twelve-year-old girl, African-American with dark skin, brown eyes, and long black hair. Last seen on her way to school in Queens two days ago.” Sherlock said. “But, the school says she never arrived.”

“And she’s still missing?” Joan asked, not feeling terribly hopeful. “It’s been forty-eight hours!”

“Excellent observation, Watson!” said Sherlock, drily. “Now, her parents didn’t receive the telephone message from the school till they returned home around six that evening. Miss Grant was supposed to be in rehearsal for the school play until five, so they were not expecting to hear from her.”

The kettle whistled and Joan poured water over her teabag. “So there went the first twelve hours,” she said. “And Captain Gregson hasn’t turned up anything?”

“No. In fact, this case has not come through Gregson at all. The girl’s parents contacted me directly—something about a newspaper advertisement?”

“Oh, wow, I’m a little surprised that paid off so quickly,” Joan said, sipping at her tea. “We talked about taking on some more private cases, so I put out some ads. But why didn’t the parents go to the police?”

“They did, actually. But the police have come up blank thus far, and frightened parents are desperate, so they called us.”

“What are we going to find that the police didn’t?”

“Well, Watson, we have friends that the police don’t. Come along! Time to continue your education!”

* * *

Sherlock tapped away at his phone as he and Joan headed through Jamaica toward Hempstead. He’d been alternately reading intently and typing furiously for at least the past forty minutes.

“Are you going to explain who this contact is?” Joan asked. “I ought to wonder why we’re going out to Long Island for a case about a kid missing from Queens, but with you I’m not surprised at all.”

Sherlock looked up from his phone. “The man we are going to see is something of a specialist. Where he lives is quite irrelevant. That is all I will tell you, as I would prefer him to make his own introductions. And no, before you ask, he is no reformed kidnapper.” He resumed tapping.

Joan raised her eyebrows but said nothing more. There was little point to pressing Sherlock for information when he had decided not to share. Instead, she studied the houses out the window, contemplating what sort of people might live in them, before returning to the journal article she was reading about common household poisons that do not always show up on tox screens.

* * *

Evidently some of Sherlock’s tapping had been in order to reserve a cab to their destination. Joan followed him out of the train station and into the car, answering his questions over what she’d just read. Sherlock was almost (but not quite) smiling as she answered his final question, and she felt pleased with herself.

They climbed out of the cab, and Sherlock paid the fare before leading Joan up the sidewalk toward a house mostly obscured by a large poplar hedge. On the front porch, Sherlock rang the bell, and the two were immediately met with the barking of at least two dogs. _No, just two,_ Joan thought. _Both reasonably large from the pitch of their barks_.

The door opened. There, pushing back two sheepdogs, was a man, young and handsome, with white skin and dark hair. “Sherlock!” the man said, stepping onto the porch and leaving the dogs inside. “Good to see you again! Wish it weren’t business, though.” The two men shook hands, and now Sherlock did smile.

“And you must be Joan!” the man said, offering his hand now to her with a cheerful smile as well. “I’m Tom Swale. Glad to meet you.”

Joan took his hand and returned the smile. “Yes, Joan Watson. Glad to meet you, too. Has Sherlock told you about our case, then? How can you help?”

Tom took a breath. “Right. Give me a moment to put the dogs out, and let’s go in and sit down. Would you like anything to drink?”

A few minutes later, Joan, Sherlock, and Tom were seated around Tom’s kitchen table with glasses of iced tea and a variety of expressions. Tom looked like he had some serious business to share with them, and Sherlock looked… almost apprehensive, though it was hard to tell. Joan looked back and forth between them, eyebrows raised, before asking, “Well?”

Tom smiled slightly. “Well. You’re here because something’s gone wrong and you think I can help. Let’s start with what’s gone wrong.”

“We received a call this morning about a girl gone missing from Queens,” Joan said. “The police have found nothing and the parents are extremely worried, so they contacted us.” She continued, recounting everything Sherlock had told her that morning, exactly as he had said it. His almost-smile had returned. He seemed to be studying Joan’s detective skills, and she seemed to be hitting the mark.

Sure enough, Sherlock swallowed his sip of tea, set his glass down, and nodded. “And that’s that. With no witnesses, no one caught on tape in the area of her disappearance for quite some length of time on either end, and no ransom note, it seemed prudent to see what you knew, if anything.”

Tom nodded. “Excuse me.” He ducked into the living room and came back with a fairly sizable book, setting it on the table and taking his seat again.

“So, who are you?” Joan asked, eyeing the plain-covered book, which was titled in an unfamiliar script. “What sort of specialist?”

“Joan,” Tom began, “please let me make my full explanation before you say anything. When I’m done, then please ask all the questions you like. Alright?” Joan nodded and sipped her tea.

“Right,” said Tom. “I am a wizard. Not like a magician for parties, but a something else entirely. Wizardry itself is best thought of as a little-known branch of science.” Joan nodded silently, flicking her eyes to Sherlock, who was listening intently but calmly. He was taking this seriously.

“Let me demonstrate.” Tom lifted his glass from the table, and spoke a long string of words. To Joan’s ears they were full of alien hisses and trills, but to her mind they were completely intelligible. _This is a limited-range solidification spell, class E…_ she heard, and an impossibly detailed yet brief description of the space in front of Tom, ten inches above the table. Her mind understood images of ice and stone, and she heard Tom asking the air to remember those feelings, please, and become solid for a time. Then Tom raised his glass of tea to the location he had just described and let it go.

But it did not fall. There was no shattering of glass or spilling of tea. In fact, there was just the small _clink_ of glass being set down on a hard, stone surface. Invisible. In midair. Joan looked to Sherlock again, and found him watching her, rather than the magic trick. His face was still calm, and he quickly turned back to Tom, as did Joan. Tom removed the glass from the air and set it back on the table.

“Touch it,” he said. He made a fist and rapped on that part of the air with his knuckles, creating a thick, knocking sound. Joan slowly reached a hand forward and her fingers _did_ touch something solid. She slid her hand over the surface and caught the edge between her thumb and fingers, holding this section of air like a sandwich. It was no more than half an inch thick, and four inches by four inches on top, but it was there. Definitively there, and _solid_. Solid and immobile.

Tom spoke a few more strange but familiar words. They had vowels Joan had never heard before and pops she didn’t know humans could make, but her mind heard him say, _Thank you. As you were._ Whatever she had been grasping was gone, now just empty ( _empty? soft? normal?_ ) air. ( _What was the opposite of hard air? That didn’t even make sense._ ) She waved her hand slowly through the space, just to be sure.

“How does that w—?” Joan started to ask, but Sherlock cut her off. “Wait. He’ll get there.”

“This power—” Tom continued, once Joan had taken her hand back, “this power to alter the universe in unusual ways is a gift to certain members of sentient species from the Powers That Be in the Universe. It is our responsibility to use this gift to do right in the world, particularly to slow down entropy.”

“Entropy like chemistry entropy?” Joan asked. “Sorry to interrupt. I just want to make sure I understand you.”

“Yes, like chemistry entropy,” said Tom. “When the worlds were created, the Powers That Be each added to the worlds the things They thought were necessary for Life. But one Power gave to the worlds a gift unlike any of the others: entropy and death. The other Powers could not counteract or remove that gift, but instead They empower living creatures affected by that gift to fight against it. When each species becomes sentient, they are met by this Lone Power or one of Its agents and given a Choice, whether or not to accept its gift.”

Joan took in a sharp breath, wondering what the alternatives were. Tom held up a hand to keep her from speaking.

“With that gift of entropy does come death, but with it also comes the ability to grow and change. Many, many species, ours included, have accepted this gift and have stories about it, in on form or another. You probably recognize the Lone One in Its serpent avatar? Or Its presence in the opening of Pandora’s Box? Some species only accept it partway, and a few do not accept it at all. There is no way to reverse entropy, but we can slow it down, fighting the Lone One and preserving Life in the Universe. That is job of wizards.” Tom opened his book and began paging through it. Sherlock leaned over slightly to look over Tom’s shoulder.

Joan sat back in her chair, trying to catalogue this new information. Despite herself, she laughed inwardly at how Sherlock-esque her mental process felt. “So…” she started to ask.

“What does this have to do with your girl?” Tom suggested, looking up from the book. “A good deal, I suspect. You see, most wizards are offered their power very young, before they know what is impossible, or what is considered impossible. This gives them a distinct advantage over the Lone Power. But just as every species had a Choice, so does every wizard. We call it the wizard’s Ordeal. Most Ordeals mean the wizard meets with some avatar or agent of the Lone One and fights it. If the wizard wins, he or she is granted full wizard status, and may be assigned to interventions at the Powers’ need. Wizards who fail their Ordeal may lose their memory of the event and of ever being offered the power, but some simply do not survive. More than a few missing children are those who failed their Ordeals.”

Sherlock, who had been staring at the page in Tom’s book, rejoined the conversation. “So is she in here? Is she trapped somewhere? Has she failed?”

“Aduna Grant, you said is her name?” Tom asked. He turned a page in his book again and ran his finger down lines of the strange text.

He looked at Joan. "This is called my wizard's Manual. It's a sort of combination encyclopedia, how-to book, and white pages. The Powers provide information to wizards on an as-needed basis, so what appears in here at any moment depends on what I'm working on. It also varies by seniority and authority. I'm pretty high up the food chain for the Metro Area so I should have access to—“ He stopped short, his finger at the bottom of the left-side page. “—any relevant data...." He finished quietly.

"Well?" Sherlock asked. "I cannot yet read the Speech upside down."

"Been practicing, have you?" Tom asked with a small smile. "Well, she is in the book, and it says she's off Ordeal, but it does not show her current location, which it normally does," he said, looking at them both. Then he spoke directly to the book. "Show coordinates for Aduna Grant."

Joan could see the curly black text on the page fade to grey, and some new text appear on top of it. "That looks like a computer error message," she said.

Tom raised his eyebrows at the page. "You're not far off," he replied, and flipped another couple pages. "Manuals also provide a messaging service, which is especially useful when you wish to speak to a wizard without access to a phone."

He tapped one finger on the page and spoke to it again. "Rhiow?" Pause. "Yes, I was looking for information about a girl named Aduna Grant and my Manual said to contact you." He spoke in the familiar-unfamiliar alien language again. _Click, hiss, hum._ "Oh boy. Yeah, we'll come right over." But this time there was no underlying power, just the conveyance of information. "No, Carl's not home. I have some guests who brought this to my attention. See you soon. _Dai_."

“‘Die’?” Joan asked. “Why did you say that?”

Tom let out a small laugh. “How much of what I said could you understand?”

“All of it,” replied Joan. “But that wasn’t English, was it? I mean, I understood it all in my mind, but I could hear all sorts of sounds that did not match what you were saying. But why did you say ‘die’?”

“Your protégée is sharp!” Tom said to Sherlock. To Joan he said, “No, that wasn’t English. But most people would have perceived it as such, without hearing the extra sounds. It is a language called the Speech. It is the language of Life and the Universe Itself, and all things understand it, to one degree or another. It is the language of spells, but less formal recensions of it are also used for general communication among wizards, and by some whole species, wizard or otherwise. To one untrained in the Speech, it usually sounds like their native language. You are very observant to have heard the physical sounds of it as well as its meaning.”

“So when you made the air hard,” Joan said, “you just… told it to? That’s all you have to do, is tell something to be a certain way, with certain words? You told it to remember the feeling of ice and stone, and it did. Why?”

“You understood all that?” Tom looked impressed. Joan looked at Sherlock, who looked slightly smug.

“Watson is _very_ sharp,” Sherlock said to Tom, with a wry grin. “Why do you think I work with her?” Joan smiled back.

“Why does it work?” she asked again.

“Well, as I said, wizards are given their abilities by the Powers of the Universe, but the abilities do not come without a price. Spells require energy. Scientifically speaking, it takes a lot of energy to make air become dense and solid, and the same is true in wizardry. I said earlier to think of wizardry like a little-known branch of science. We can bend the laws of physics if we contribute the energy. If I had hardened much more air at that one time, I would have had to catch my breath.”

“So all the writing in your book…?” Joan asked.

“…is the written form of the Speech,” Tom replied. “There are hundreds of characters in the longhand written form. They are often condensed into common shorthands, as well. Come on!” He pushed back from the table and stood up. “I’ll give you another demonstration!”

They all set their glasses in the sink, and Tom lead Joan and Sherlock to the backyard, after calling the dogs inside. He opened his Manual to a bookmarked page, pinched the page, and pulled a long string of text straight out of it, now glowing faintly blue. Tom threw it to the ground, where it became a large circle.

“Stay inside the spell-circle,” he warned. Joan planted her feet but looked around herself to inspect the circle more closely and watch Tom as he rubbed out some parts of the circle and rewrote them.

Tom looked up. “My apologies, Joan, but how much do you weigh?”

"Uhhh one-forty, give or take? Why?"

"I believe Tom is going to transport us to meet his colleague Rhiow," Sherlock answered. "Right?"

"Yes, and I'd like to make sure that all of you gets there," said Tom. "When is your birthday? What was the last thing you read?"

"A journal article about household poisons. Why is that relevant?"

"Wizardry is mainly about persuading reality to change according to your wishes," Tom said. "In order to change anything, you have to accurately describe it as it is, and also as you want it to be. Misdescribing you as you are, in a spell-enacting recension of the Speech, could cause you to become as you are in that description."

Joan swallowed and nodded.

"Your birthday, then?" asked Tom. "And how tall are you?"

Joan gave him the rest of the information he requested, as did Sherlock. Finally Tom stood up from the ground and said, "Customarily, two or more wizards working together check each other's ‘spelling’.” He made quotation marks with his fingers and chuckled at his own joke. “I am spelling alone, here, but Sherlock, you’ve been studying the Speech recreationally, right?”

“It seems a prudent course of study in my free time, yes.”

“Good. Please check your name, here, and Joan’s, there.” He pointed at two spots in the circle. To Joan he added, “He knows you both much better than I do, and I trust his abilities in the Speech to catch any major errors.”

“The ground suits,” Sherlock said, in the Speech. “I do need to find more people to practice this language with….”

“Right. Hold still.” Tom began to read the spell.

A little apprehensive, Joan listened to his words, held in place by the spell and pressure of the Universe leaning in around them to hear what Tom was saying. After a few moments, they vanished.

* * *

Rhiow yawned as she trotted along the roof of a building on her way to Grand Central Station. Yesterday Hhuha had taken her to the “ _vhet_ ” for a check-up, which had taken most of the day and severely cut into her sleep time. Saash and Arhu had been handling the gates that day, and when Rhiow got home after an uncomfortable ride in the car, she had been hoping to beg some salmon off of one of the _ehhif_ and get to sleep. The Universe had had other plans.

She _had_ managed to acquire some salmon, but as she was eating, Arhu’s voice had whispered in her mind about a stuck gate. It was a message he had left earlier, while she was indisposed. She had reached out to him in her mind to ask for some clarification.

_Hunt’s luck,_ he’d answered. _Did your trip to the_ vhet _really take so long?_

_’Luck to you, too,_ she’d replied. _It was a nightmare of a trip, with some_ houff _coming in ahead of me for an emergency surgery. Silly thing swallowed too much garbage._

_I don’t see why you were even there. You are healthy, and you could have stayed hidden from your_ ehhif _and not lost a day,_ said Arhu.

_Yes, but then they would have worried, and eventually they would have caught me,_ Rhiow said. _I can’t stay away or sidled forever, and I can’t very well disappear from their arms or a locked cage._

_I suppose,_ grumbled Arhu. Rhiow knew he was still skeptical of the benefits of cohabiting with _ehhif_.

_Anyway,_ she said, _what’s up with this gate? Can it wait till morning? I’m exhausted._

Arhu had then tried to explain how the gate was stuck closed and the hyperstrings were all twisted up, but Rhiow had fallen asleep in the middle of it. She’d woken this morning to a message just asking her to meet him at the gate as soon as possible.

Now Rhiow stepped carefully through the skylight, sidled, and made her way down the seven stories to the main concourse and the troubled gate.

She padded down the platform of Track 32 toward the small black-and-white shape that was Arhu, carefully avoiding the few _ehhif_ who were milling about waiting for a train. 

“Hunt’s luck, Rhi,” Arhu said, as Rhiow approached him.

“Hunt’s luck,” Rhiow replied, and they breathed breaths together. Clearly Arhu had stopped by a deli upstairs to beg. “Where’s Saash?” Urruah, their other former teammate, had come to the end of his sixth life not long ago, and so far his seventh incarnation had not found them yet. He had trained Arhu well, though. They all had.

“Jath called from Penn Station. Construction has displaced one of their gates, and she went to help them stabilize it. As much as I’d love her expertise here, she couldn’t make whiskers or tail of our problem, either.”

“Alright,” Rhiow said. “What’s up with this one, then?”

Arhu turned around and flicked his tail in frustration. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Come look.” He led her over to the gate and they took a look around.

“It’s...odd,” she said. “It’s not misplaced. It’s not unhinged or unstrung....”

“It doesn’t respond to interrogation at all,” said Arhu.

Rhiow put out a paw to test this. Her claws did hook into the hyperstrings of the interrogation weave, but she couldn’t feel _anything_ in the gate. Normally it would be thrumming with power, almost alive. She looked at the gate, her paws still caught in the unresponsive strings. It was as if the near end of the spacetime path along which the last user had traveled had gotten stuck on the other end. The strings were all tangled together. She could almost see where they might lead.

“This is very, very strange,” she said. She sat back and began to listen to the Whispering, looking for any guidance on what might have happened. Just then, there was a voice in her head, and not that of the Whisperer.

_Rhiow?_

It was T'hom, one of the Seniors for the area. Normally she worked with his partner, Har’lh, though.

Dai stihó, _Senior_ , she said. _Can I help you?_

_Yes, I was looking for information about a girl named Aduna Grant and my Manual said to contact you._ T'hom sounded a bit uncertain. That was not a good sign.

_That name does not mean anything to me, but let me consult the Whispering,_ Rhiow replied. She set her conversation with T'hom to the back of her mind and listened for Hrau’f, the Whisperer.

(Aa’unah H’rahnh. Resident of the _ehhif_ area of Queens, iAh’hah.) came Hrau’f’s voice.

_One moment, T'hom. I am looking to see if she has travelled through here._

(Departed through the Track 32 gate approximately fifty hours ago, the last departure through that gate.)

Rhiow winced inwardly. She had directed that _ehhif_ -queen to the gate herself. The girl had looked a little lost. _T'hom, you know there are no coincidences. Arhu and I are investigating a fouled-up gate right now, and I think she was one of the last to use it. You’d better come see this yourself._

_Oh boy. Yeah, we'll come right over._

_Come to Track Thirty-two, cloaked,_ Rhiow advised. _Is Har’lh with you?_ She hoped he was. T'hom was an excellent wizard, but Har’lh was much better acquainted with the gating systems.

_No, Carl's not home,_ said T'hom. _I have some guests who brought this to my attention. See you soon._ Dai.

The connection faded out of her mind, and she flicked her tail nervously.

“You ok?” asked Arhu.

“T'hom is on his way, and bringing some guests. We’d better figure out how to clear the _ehhif_ from this area so we can sort this out. In the meantime, let’s get unsidled so that T'hom can find us when he gets here. He will be cloaked.”

They slipped out from the among the hyperstrings and sat in the corner to wait.

“We could disrupt the signals to these two tracks and make the _ehhif_ divert their trains elsewhere,” Arhu suggested.

“Yes, said Rhiow. “That would give us enough space to work for now, and hopefully not cause too much trouble down the line. Let’s do that after the next train on Thirty-one.”

A few minutes later, Rhiow and Arhu heard a small clap of displaced air off to their left.

“ _Dai_ , cousins,” came T'hom’s voice, at the same time as an _ehhif_ -queen said, “Where are we?”

“Grand Central,” said an _ehhif_ -tom who was not T'hom. “Shhh.”

Rhiow stepped forward. “ _Dai stihó_ , T'hom.” She looked around and said, “It is safe for you to unveil yourselves now. We will sidle though, to attract less attention.”

As she and Arhu slipped back among the hyperstrings, she heard T'hom say the word that ended his cloaking spell. Now she could see the two _ehhif_ he’d brought with him. They were both tall, thin, and fair, the queen with long black hair and the tom with short, lighter hair.

“Rhiow? Arhu? Can you hear me?” T'hom looked as though he spoke to the _ehhif_ , as it would appear strange to be talking to empty air.

“Yes,” they both said.

“Good. Cousins, I’d like to introduce you to Sherlock Holmes and Joan Watson.” T'hom pointed subtly to each as he said their names. “They solve mysteries, such as finding our missing young wizard. Sherlock, Joan, did you see the two cats that were just here? The black one is Rhiow, and the black-and-white one is Arhu. They maintain the wizardly traveling facilities here at Grand Central.”

“ _Dai stihó_ ,” said Sher’lahh, with a kind _ehhif_ smile.

“Well met,” said Arhu.

“Another wizard?” asked Rhiow. T'hom had addressed her and Arhu in the Speech, but the _ehhif_ in their own language, and she had listened through the Speech. But now the tom used the Speech himself.

“No,” answered Sher’lahh, in the same language. “Merely a curious student of this language.”

“Cats?” Dhoan was asking T'hom. “Cat wizards?”

“Yes,” T'hom chuckled. “Most sentient species on Earth have some wizards. Cats are much better attuned to the energies involved in worldgate function for wizardly travel, so we leave the management of them up to our feline colleagues.” He spoke _ehhif_ with Dhoan, Rhiow noticed, and she seemed much less informed than Sher’lahh.

“Pleased to meet you!” Rhiow offered in the Speech. “Can you understand me alright?”

“Yes,” said Dhoan in her language. “It’s strange, but yes. And you can understand me?”

“Yes,” said Arhu. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

“Let’s,” said T'hom. “The three of us might need some lunch first, though. Can we discuss business while we eat?”

“That’s fine,” Rhiow said. _Arhu will probably want a bite to eat as well,_ she thought to herself. He had never quite outgrown his hungry stray kittenhood, and then working with Urruah and his love for MhHonalh’s had only encouraged him.

“Lead the way,” Arhu said, and T'hom set off up the platform with the other four following.

* * *

Several minutes later, Tom, Joan, and Sherlock were all seated at a small corner table in a pizzeria. Tom felt two cats brush up against his ankles.

“Oh, good. You’re here,” he said, and set down his slice of pizza. He quietly read a spell to seal off their area from other people near them. People would be able to see the three of them, but their conversation would not sound clear. As he finished the Wizard’s Knot to tie off the spell, he felt a rush of energy leave him and he took a couple deep breaths.

“Okay. Stay sidled, but we can all speak freely now.” Tom heard the two cats climb up onto the empty chair at their table.

“Arhu, will you tell T'hom what happened yesterday?” Rhiow asked, then added to Tom, “I was at the _vhet_ yesterday, and Arhu and Saash took care of the gates.”

“Well,” began Arhu, “we got in here around ten yesterday morning, and Track Thirty-two, where our problem gate is, was the last one we checked. It’s twisted up very strangely, and we couldn’t figure out what to do with it. I made a note in the Whispering so that no one would try to use it, but it isn’t patent or apparently functional at all, so we did not disrupt trains or flag it as urgent. I hoped that Rhiow would be able to figure it out this morning.”

“The Whispering?” asked Joan.

“Cats don’t read much,” Arhu said drily. “T'hom gets his information from the Powers in a book, but we listen to the Whispering in our minds, and Hrau’f, one of the Powers, tells us what we need to know. We can, if you will, whisper back to add information to the collective knowledge.”

“I can talk to my Manual and add information about the state of things the same way,” Tom added.

“Alright, what happened next?” said Sherlock, taking a bite of his pizza.

“Well, I talked to Rhiow about it briefly when we got home that night, but she fell asleep. The Powers didn’t indicate extreme urgency, so I thought we would sort it out today. But now you’re all here, and it sounds important.”

“As I said, Sherlock and Joan are looking for a young wizard named Aduna Grant. She is missing from her parents’ home, which I believe to be on account of her Ordeal. However, my Manual shows she is off Ordeal now, but will not show me her location, which does not bode well to me.”

“How did Sher’lahh know to find you?” Rhiow inquired.

Tom grinned. “Ahh, it’s a good story. In short, you know I work as a writer for my ‘real job’, right? I ran into Sherlock a few months back when he was investigating a case, and I asked if I could tag along with him at some point to get some ideas for a book. He graciously allowed it, and eventually I did, but some things got ugly, and he got a crash-course introduction to wizardry.”

“It was quite informative,” Sherlock said, and Tom caught sight of Joan raising her eyebrows at Sherlock, silently chewing.

“After a brief explanation, it made the world make a lot more sense,” he continued. “Anyway, I recalled Tom saying that not a few of the children who go missing every year are due to failed or delayed Ordeals, and the way she just vanished with no one around and no one demanding ransom… Well, I thought I would touch base with him.”

“Quite reasonable,” said Rhiow. “And T'hom, I think you are right about her Ordeal. I believe I was the last one to see her, actually. The gate upstairs is is not responding to interrogations at all nor showing its access log, but the Whisperer tells me she was the last to use it, and I remember giving her directions to get there a couple days ago.”

“Friday morning?” asked Sherlock. He wiped his mouth and began to fold up his napkin and paper plate.

“Yes,” said Rhiow. “She looked like she didn’t quite know what she was doing, which is explained by her heading off toward Ordeal. I don’t know where she was going, though. My guess is that she didn’t make it.”

“Right. She’s still alive, though, so she must be stuck somewhere,” Tom said, gathering up his garbage. Let’s go take a look.”

“You go straight there,” Arhu said. “I’m going to disrupt some switch signals so that the platform there stays clear for us for a bit.”

Tom lifted the spell from around their table, and the three humans threw out their trash. Then they headed back to Track 32, Rhiow in tow, while Arhu went off in another direction.

Fortunately, a train had just pulled out on Track 32, so the platform was nearly empty when they arrived. While they waited for Arhu’s meddling to take effect, Tom led Joan and Sherlock to an area away from the security cameras to perform another invisibility shield.

“I took Rhiow’s word on it earlier that it was ok to drop my spell where we were, but didn’t think about the cameras. Will it cause a problem, Rhi?”

“I don’t think so, T’hom. But you are right to take precautions.”

After Tom read the spell, he warned Sherlock and Joan to stay within a two-meter radius of him so that they would stay invisible, and not to touch anyone who would be unable to see them. Then they all approached the gate.

“What are we looking for?” Joan asked. “What is a worldgate?”

“Worldgates are like more permanent versions of the transportation I did to jump us over here,” Tom replied. “They have a great deal of energy of their own, so someone using them doesn’t have to lay out as much personal energy for their travel. They are supported by a form of energy we call hyperstrings, since it is almost woven together. Cats can see hyperstrings, which is why they mostly maintain our gating facilities on Earth.”

“T’hom, can you see the gate?” Rhiow asked.

“All I can see is that it isn’t patent,” Tom answered. “Can we do a spell to show me and Sherlock and Joan the strings as well?”

“It will be a sizable energy outlay,” said Arhu’s voice as he approached them, sidled, “but yes, and I think we should. T’hom, open your Manual please.”

Tom set his manual on the ground, and Arhu’s black-and-white body popped into visibility with its nose to the page.

“As long as we’re inside your shield, visibility amongst ourselves seems wise,” he said. “How does this spell look?”

Tom bent down to look at it, and Rhiow unsidled herself as well to check it over.

“That seems fine,” she said.

Tom nodded and spoke a few words in the Speech. Then he pinched the text if the spell they had looked at off his page and threw the shimmering blue sentences of the Speech down onto the ground. “Cousins, check the spelling and your names, please. Sherlock, if you would check yours and Joan’s?”

Sherlock, Arhu, and Rhiow all walked around the circle, reading it. Tom followed, double checking everything himself.

“Alright,” Arhu said. “The three of us will read this spell together. Sher’lahh? Dhoan? I recommend closing your eyes, so that the appearance of the strings will not surprise you or hurt your eyes suddenly.”

Tom waited until Sherlock and Joan were standing still with closed eyes at the center of the circle, then asked, “Does the ground suit?”

“The ground suits,” replied the cats.

Then fell the hush of the Universe listening to the spell the three read, and after a minute, when Tom looked up from saying the Wizard’s Knot, he could see the strings on which the gate was hung.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said to Joan and Sherlock. And to Rhiow and Arhu he said, “I can see why you are concerned about this gate. In my limited experience, I’ve never seen anything so strange.”

The hyperstrings extended beyond the portal of the gate, as they should have if it were patent, but almost immediately they began to weave and twist themselves together in a very unnatural way.

“That is very...complex,” said Sherlock, observing the gate.

“Yes,” said Tom. “Usually humans can only see the portal of it, and even then only if they’re looking for it. Those strings behind the portal should dissipate if the gate is not active.”

“What should they look like if the gate _is_ active?” Joan asked.

“A bit like a tunnel,” said Tom. “A tunnel through spacetime that opens on the other end wherever you told it to.”

“Okay,” said Joan. “It looks like Aduna, if she was the last to use this, took some kind of a twist in her tunnel, doesn’t it? I bet it has to be sorted out from her end.”

“Very perceptive,” Rhiow said. “Any other thoughts, anyone?”

“Well, she probably doesn’t know how to fix it herself, and may not realize there is a problem.” Tom looked around, thoughtfully.

“Is there any way to follow her?” Sherlock asked. “Could one of you follow the path she took and find her?”

Arhu shook his head and pulled back his whiskers. “No. We have no record of her destination coordinates, and the gate’s natural energy is practically zero, and isn’t responding to anything the right way.”

They all stared in thought for a few minutes. At last, Tom spoke. “I know someone who has a few extra tricks up his sleeve as far as traveling. Rhiow, you know of Darryl McAllister?” He looked at her seriously.

“Yes, Senior,” she said, and then caught Arhu’s eye. They were silent, and Tom knew she was explaining Darryl’s significance to Arhu.

Tom turned to Joan and Sherlock. “The other wizard I am going to invite is rather young. Younger wizards are usually more powerful, especially because they don’t know the limits of their power. Darryl is not _that_ young, but he is a very special wizard. Whatever you see him do, it is best not to comment on it. Ask me later, in private, if you must. As long as he thinks his abilities are normal but unusual, he will continue to be powerful and useful, but if he learns how unique he is, it may spell his end. Am I clear?” Tom did not want to give out more information about Darryl than was strictly necessary, but Sherlock was likely to ask all sorts of questions.

He looked back at the cats. “All clear, cousins?”

“Yes, T’hom,” they said.

“Okay. Let’s hope he’s available.” Tom pulled out his Manual and turned to the messaging section. 

* * *

Guitar chords rang out of Darryl’s pocket. He pulled out his wizpod and looked at the notification on the screen: _Tom Swale calling_. He slid his finger across the screen and held it up to his ear.

“ _Dai stihó_ , Tom! What can I do for you?”

“Are you busy?” Tom asked on the other end.

“Nope, just hanging around staying out of my mom’s hair while she works on supper. What’s up?”

“I’m with Rhiow and Arhu and some friends at Grand Central. I think we could use your help. Both of you, if you know what I mean. Will your mom mind you being gone?”

“No, like I said, I’ve just been in her way. If it takes longer than four hours I’ll figure something out. I’ll see you there shortly. Where in Grand Central?”

“We’re on the platform between Tracks Thirty-one and Thirty-two. Come cloaked if you can.”

“You got it, bossman. _Dai!_ ”

Darryl clicked off his wizpod and returned it to his pocket. He went downstairs and poked his head into the kitchen. “Smells good, Mom! I’m going to go take a walk for a while, maybe see if anyone at the park wants to play frisbee, okay? I have my phone.”

“Okay, honey. Have fun!” his mom answered, without looking up from the casserole she was making. Darryl still hadn’t figured out what about today warranted such a complicated supper, but it smelled tasty, so he wasn’t going to complain.

He stepped outside and pulled his wizpod out again to check the wording of the invisibility spell. He read it carefully, enjoying the feeling of the Universe leaning in to listen. Then he checked the coordinates for the platform Tom had mentioned and popped over there.

He opened his eyes on the platform, which appeared deserted. “Tom, I’m here,” he called quietly. “Where should I go to get into your cloaking radius?”

“Hey Darryl!” He heard Tom’s voice, and walked toward it. Suddenly he could see Tom, two other adults, and two cats.

He dropped his own shield. “ _Dai stihó_ , cousins!”

“You all here?” Tom asked.

Darryl thought for a second and brought his second self to join his first. “Now I am!”

Tom nodded. “Okay. You know Arhu and Rhiow?”

“Yup! _Dai!_ ” he said to them.

“This is Sherlock and Joan,” Tom said, gesturing to the other humans. “They’re not wizards, but they brought this intervention to our attention.”

“Hi!” said Darryl. “Nice to meet you. I’m Darryl McAllister, resident wizardly specialist in weird transportation. What are we doing?”

“Can you see the strings of the worldgate over here?” Tom asked.

“Nope,” said Darryl, looking around at the spell circles on the ground and pulling out his wizpod. “I can fix that, though.” He found the spell on his wizpod and read it out, taking a deep breath and blinking a few times at the end.

“Are you alright?” Joan asked him.

“I’m fine. Just a little surprised by how much energy that spell took, and how bright the strings are.”

“Do you see how they are twisted?” Arhu asked.

“Uh-huh,” said Darryl. “That doesn’t look good.”

“We think there is someone stuck on the other end because of something gone wrong during a gating,” said Sherlock. “We can’t get to her to help her set it straight, and she’s just come off Ordeal and probably doesn’t realize what’s happening.”

“Hmm. Definitely not good.” Darryl turned to Tom. “You think I can bilocate to get there? That only works if I have coordinates, which seems to be your hang-up as well, right?”

“Well, what I’m hoping is that you can somehow follow the strings down that wormhole to wherever she is. We can't even send a message down them because their natural energy is defunct from the twist, but….” Tom trailed off.

Darryl walked over and took a closer look. “Sure, I’ll try it. I guess if I just go forward to where I can see….” He took a deep breath and concentrated on the look of the strings just past the gate.

Then he was there, tangled up in the strings. He couldn’t see anything the but the strings in front of or behind him, but his outside self didn’t see anything gone wrong, and he felt alright.

“Okay,” said his outside self to Tom. I’m in there, I feel alright. Let me make sure I can get out.” He concentrated on his bedroom, and then his self inside the warped tunnel was sitting on his bed.

“Okay,” he said to Tom again. “I went back to my bedroom with no problem.” He paused again and went back into the tangle of hyperstrings. “And now I’m back in the gate.”

Tom nodded, carefully. “You sure you’re going to be okay? Rhiow, Arhu, can you hook into the gate in case something goes wrong?”

Wordlessly the cats approached the gate and caught their claws in the weave of the gate in such a way as to force patency if it suddenly came back online.

“Thank you,” Tom said.

“Here,” Darryl was saying, pulling out his wizpod. “I’ll keep a line open to you so that you know I’m okay, alright?”

Tom pulled out his Manual and Darryl pressed “return call.”

“Good,” said Tom. “I’ve got you here. Get going, guy.”

“Oh, Tom? What is the name of the person I’m looking for?”

“Aduna Grant,” Tom answered. “She’s twelve.”

“Got it.”

Darryl looked through the eyes of his self already in the tunnel and concentrated on the spot just in front of him. He couldn’t see any differences between what his two sets of eyes saw, but he could feel that he had moved forward.

“I’m alright,” he said to Tom, and concentrated on the next spot in front of him.

“Glad to hear it,” said Tom.

It was more difficult than he was used to, since all he could see on all sides was brightly lit strings of unnamable colors, and they looked nearly the same to each of his selves. Still, he had a strong instinct about which of his selves was ahead and always looked through that one’s eyes.

After several minutes, he began to feel the strings closing in. “Tom, I think I’m reaching the twisting point,” he said.

“Okay,” came Tom’s voice from his wizpod. “How are you?”

“Still doing fine,” Darryl answered, and continued forward. “How are Rhiow and Arhu?”

“They’re doing fine,” Tom answered. “They say there’s been no change to the gate.”

“Okay.” Darryl made a few more jumps forward and then—

— _FWUMP!_ His next jump pushed him out of the strings onto a strange, soft-but-solid white floor.

“Darryl? What happened?” Tom’s voice sounded worried. He must have heard the crash.

“I’m alright, Tom,” he said. “I’m glad you can still hear me.” Darryl pulled his second self into the small white room he found himself in, and blinked at the ceiling a few times. His head hurt a little.

“What happened?” Tom asked again.

“I must have gotten to the other end. I’m all in here now. Let me take a look around.” He took a breath and sat up.

“Oh!” Suddenly he was face-to-face with a young girl, brandishing a book at him, her dark face scared.

“Who are you?!” she shouted. “Do you belong to Her?”

Darryl threw up a force field spell with half a thought, scrambled backwards, and said, “No! No, I’m on errantry, and I greet you. I belong to no one but myself and the One.”

The girl lowered her book a little bit, but still looked very wary. “How did you get here?” she demanded.

“Are you Aduna Grant?” Darryl asked her gently.

“Who’s asking?”

_Well, she’s got enough spunk to fight off the Lone One_ , Darryl thought. “My name is Darryl McAllister. I’m a wizard from New York, like you, right? Is that your Manual? Look me up in there.”

The girl opened her book and asked it to show her information on Darryl McAllister. She nodded her head, apparently satisfied. “Okay, yeah. I’m Aduna. How did you find me? Where are we? Where is She?”

“Where is who?” Darryl asked.

“The One I’ve been fighting and who left me here with this poor guy,” she answered, pointing behind her and around a curve in the small room’s wall. Darryl looked around it and saw a middle-aged man curled up in a ball.

_Oh right, she’s just off Ordeal. The Lone One must have shown up in a female avatar here._ “I think She’s gone,” he said. “You fought Her off, and you won. As for how I found you, you’ve got some people back home looking for you, and we tracked you down to here. I was the only one who could figure out how to get in here, though.”

“Okay… So you know how to bust me outta here, or what?”

Darryl smiled. “Yeah, that’s going to be the easy part, I think. Who’s your buddy back there?”

“I don’t know. I was waiting for a train to pass so I could take a worldgate out of Grand Central, and all of a sudden the gate was live and me and him got pushed into it. He think’s he’s dreamin’ or something, and I was starting to feel the same way.”

“Alright, I’ll take you both home,” Darryl said. He picked up his wizpod. “Tom?”

“Right here,” Tom said.

“Good. I’m bringing two home, Aduna and some poor dude who got dragged along for the ride. You better be ready to run interference with him.”

“Got it,” said Tom.

“Grab my hand, Aduna,” Darryl said.

She reached out but couldn’t get to his hand. “Your shield’s still up, genius.”

“Sorry!” Darryl let his shield down, took her hand, and led her over to the guy on the floor. He was in a rumpled suit jacket and curled around his briefcase. Darryl put a hand on his shoulder and pictured Tom and the others on the platform. In a moment, the three of them were joining the others back in the normal world.

“Ahh!” the man shouted.

Tom grabbed the man. “It’s okay! You’ve had a bad accident. We’re taking you to a doctor.” He touched the man’s temples and whispered very persuasively in the Speech that the man would be better off asleep. The man slumped in Tom’s arms, and Tom lowered him carefully to the floor.

“Aduna?” Sherlock asked.

“Yes?” she answered, nervously, still clinging to Darryl’s hand.

“Your mum and dad are very worried about you,” Sherlock said.

“We’ll take you home to them,” Joan added.

“Yes,” said Tom. “But first, Aduna, congratulations on passing your Ordeal. I am Tom Swale, one of the Senior wizards for New York.” In the Speech he added, “I am on errantry, and I greet you. Well met.”

“Well met, sir.”

“These are my friends, Sherlock and Joan, who have been looking for you. I will catch up with you later to talk to you about how to deal with your parents, but in the meantime we must think of a way to explain your absence the past two days.”

“TWO DAYS? I was gone, like, eight hours!”

“Time flows differently some places,” Darryl said, squeezing her hand. “And I’m not sure where you were.”

“Let’s get going, Aduna,” said Sherlock, kindly. “Tom, we’ll be in touch to let you know how it goes dropping her off. It looks like you still have some sorting to do with this gate.”

“Thank you, Sherlock,” Tom said.

“No, thank you, Tom,” said Joan. “We are lucky Sherlock knew you.”

Tom smiled. “Wizards have a saying: There are no coincidences.”

* * *

On the train back to Queens, Aduna thought long and hard about her Ordeal, but did not share it with Joan or Sherlock. The three of them decided to say that  she had taken the wrong bus to school, and then fallen and hurt herself and gotten stuck somewhere.

When they reached her door and she told the story to her parents, her father hugged her and demanded to know what was wrong with her phone, why hadn’t she asked anyone to call, did she need to go to the hospital?

“Please, Mr. Grant,” Joan asked. “We found her and just had her checked over. She is alright, but she needs to rest. We’ll bring over papers for you later. Right now she should go in and sleep. We’ll come back to talk over the case with you tomorrow. Will that be okay?”

“Of course,” her father answered, and Joan and Sherlock left.

“We’re going to need some impressive back-up from Tom here!” Joan commented to Sherlock as they walked down the drive to the road.

“He’ll figure it out, don’t worry, Watson. Let’s go back to see how they’re doing at the station.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Ailuran terms in the order they appear:**  
>  Hhuha - Susan, Rhiow’s owner  
> vhet - an Ailuran approximation of ‘vet’  
> ehhif - human  
> Hunt’s luck - Ailuran greeting  
> houff - dog (sg)  
> sidling, sidled - cats make themselves invisible by ‘sidling’ and weaving themselves in amongst the hyperstrings throughout the world  
> breathing breaths together - feline greeting ritual  
> Hrau’f (the Silent, the Whisperer) - one of the Powers, the daughter of the One, whose voice is said to whisper to wizards  
> iAh’hah - New York  
> queen - analogous to ‘female’  
> tom - analogous to ‘male’  
> MhHonalh’s - McDonald’s


End file.
